


Meteor Shower

by aj_linguistik



Series: SAO Prideweek 2019 [7]
Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: AU, Bisexual Kirito, Bisexual Male Character, Day 7, M/M, One Shot, Pining, SAO Pride Week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 01:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18458855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aj_linguistik/pseuds/aj_linguistik
Summary: Written for SAO Prideweek 2019's Day 7 prompt: AU.He's an exchange student from Aincrad studying abroad in Underworld. He came to study magic- nothing more, nothing less. That was his goal. That was his purpose. But now, he can't focus. He's distracted. His heart's just...somewhere else.





	Meteor Shower

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: We're so close to the end of the week already? ;-; this makes me sad. I'm enjoying everyone's excellent gay content. If you're familiar with me as a fic writer, you know that my personal preference is for AUs. So, it's likely no surprise that I wrote this one second. I hope you like it! ^_^
> 
> A huge thanks to @camomilafil for beta reading. :)

           Beneath me, the expanse of space stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction. A background of deep blues, purples, and a tinge of pink constantly swirled behind glistening stars hanging just over it. I dangled both arms over the edge, reaching out to those stars, imagining I could touch them. A shooting star flashed by. Gasping, I feigned catching it in my palm. I clutched my imaginary find tightly and shut my eyes.

“I wish Eugeo would just ask me out.”

As soon as the words left my lips, I realized how silly it sounded. I let out a groan of frustration and let go of the imaginary star in my palm. I grasped my hair. My face burned with the heat of the embarrassment of it all. I could have wished for anything, but I’d blurted out something clearly far from my reach like a lovestruck idiot.

Perhaps I was a lovestruck idiot.

Sighing, I sat up, picked a flower from a cluster of weeds next to me, and then resumed dangling my arms. I stared at the flower in my fingers. It was blue. Blue, Eugeo’s favorite color. I reached down and plucked one of the petals off of it. I’d seen people do this before. As I let go of the petal, I whispered those over-spoken words.

“He loves me.”

Grasping a second petal, I pulled it away from the rest and let it go as well. The two petals floated down, having nowhere to land for a very long time. That was how my heart felt; after breaking up with my girlfriend, Asuna, I’d confusedly tried to fill the hole in my heart with a number of things. But in my blind wandering, I’d met Eugeo. I wanted him to fill that space, but my heart felt like the starry expanse beneath the island. Was he like these petals? Would he become lost in there, too?

“He loves me not.”

I continued the pattern, plucking a petal, whispering the words, and releasing them into space. This was something a child might do. Something about this confusion in my chest made me want to do this childish thing. Perhaps I was being silly. At the age of eighteen, I sat on the very edge of the island and tossed flower petals into the sea of stars. I plucked the last petal and dropped it. I smiled.

“He loves me.”

Frustrated with my own behavior, I grumbled and dropped the stem as well. Truthfully, I was wishing for something I could always do myself. There was nothing stopping me from asking him out. Only the embarrassment of a lifetime.

I slapped my cheeks. I couldn’t think like that. This wasn’t the same as when I’d asked Asuna out so long ago. That was on a different continent entirely, after all. I was studying magic abroad in a different country now—no one here knew me well enough to let embarrassing stories leak back to my childhood friends.

Then again, Alice might poke fun.

“K-Kirito!”

Hearing my name shouted so suddenly made me jump upright, only to forget that there was a railing over my head. The back of my head slammed into the metal bar. I dropped back down and rolled around in the grass, clutching my head.

“Ooowwww…”

When I finally flopped over onto my back, I opened my eyes, despite the headache, and saw Eugeo bent over with his hands on his hips. He looked pretty mad. Or maybe stressed? My eyes snapped open. Had he heard me muttering with the flowers? My heart leapt into my mouth. I wasn’t sure how I’d explain that.

“How many times have I told you it’s not safe to lean over the edge of the island like that?” Eugeo asked. “Is that how you do things back in Aincrad? Do you just…dangle over the edges and hope to not fall off?”

I groaned. I’d gotten worked up for nothing.

“There’s a guard rail…” I muttered.

“A guard rail you can _fit_ through.”

I pursed my lips. He had a point. I turned my head and gazed back at the edge of the world longingly. Back home, I’d hang off of the ledges of Aincrad just the same. But this seemed to just drop off—Aincrad had walls, not cliffsides with a single, barely-there railing. Eugeo told me that way before either of us was born, mountains had surrounded this little island nation. Legend stated that an enormous beast came and consumed them and would have swallowed the entire island if not for a hero known as Bercouli.

I smirked.

“It’s not like the scary space dragon will come and gobble me up, Eugeo!”

He scrunched his shoulders up. I laughed. He playfully kicked me in the arm.

“Don’t joke about a thing like that!” he said.

Sighing, Eugeo shook his head.

“That’s not what I came out here to tell you,” he said. “Ms. Azurica is very upset that you skipped dinner prep. I thought you were perhaps studying with your mentor, Ms. Serlut, but instead you’re laying here with your front half hanging over the edge like you want to jump out into space. What am I going to do with you?”

I shrugged.

“I mean, I was with Liena for a little bit,” I said.

It wasn’t a lie. Sortiliena Serlut, my mentor at the academy, had taken me out to help me get a better handle on my rather chaotic magic. She wasn’t scared to deal with it if it got out of hand. So, we’d worked on it for a bit, and then I’d lied and said I would go straight back to the dormitory. As soon as she’d left my line of sight, I’d wandered off in the opposite direction to think.

Eugeo gazed at me. The look on his face told me that he wasn’t sure whether to believe me or not. I gave him my best reassuring smile. He sighed and let his shoulders droop. I patted the grass next to me. He shook his head, but he sat down beside me anyways. I turned my gaze back to the stars.

“You remember when we first met?” I asked.

He gave me a sideways glance.

“I was sixteen and I’d decided to be an exchange student,” I continued. “Because they said there were people here who could help me with my magic. The people of Aincrad don’t really know what to do with magical people. My family had moved there from Alne.”

Eugeo raised his eyebrows.

“I didn’t know you were from Alne,” he said.

“Did you really think someone with magic came from Aincrad, originally?” I asked him, laughing. “But back to my point, I guess. I wasn’t sure what to expect coming to the Underworld, but you made my transition a lot easier.”

I didn’t know why I was telling him this right now. I just wanted him to sit with me for a while and gaze at the stars. My eyes remained fixated on them. Another shooting star appeared. I sat forward and excitedly pointed it out.

“Look at that!”

“Make a wish,” Eugeo said, laughing.

He couldn’t have known that I’d already made a wish today, but I made a second one just in case. This time, I said it quietly to myself. I wished that something—whether by my own courage or by his—would happen between the two of us. Turning to face him, my breath caught in my throat.

His green eyes glistened. He reached over without looking at me and placed his hand on mine. I felt my heart begin to race. His skin was warm. He pointed out in front of us.

“Kirito, look! A whole meteor shower!”

I forced myself to look away from our hands. Before me the sky was painted with streams of white. Those two shooting stars had been offshoots of a much larger meteor field. It always amazed me how beautiful those showers were. When they happened to fly in the direction of your home, they were terrifying, but sitting here, gazing at them as they flew across the sky, hurtling towards another floating continent in the solar system, they took your breath away.

“You could make a lot of wishes with those,” Eugeo said.

Laughing, I turned to look at him again. This time, our eyes met.

“I wished for something spectacular to come out of the rest of our final year,” he said. “What about you? What did you wish for, Kirito?”

Eugeo’s question caught me off guard. I didn’t want to admit to him that I’d wished for us to become closer. After all, admitting it might lessen my chances for now. If I wanted to be brave and grant my own wish, I needed to work up the courage and tell him at the right moment. I gave him a smile and laughed.

“Telling you might jinx it,” I said.

“Wha—no fair!” he said. “I told you mine!”

To change the subject, I leapt to my feet. His hand was still on top of mine, so I took ahold of it and yanked him up to his feet as well. He yelped in surprise. Letting go of his hand, I dashed off towards the dormitory, laughing as I sprinted.

“H-hey! Where are you going?”

“To get my dinner!”

“You’re still in trouble, Kirito!”

Eugeo scrambled after me. I zipped down the streets, swerving around people as I navigated my way back to the dormitory. I could hear Eugeo close behind me, apologizing every time he ran past someone. I slipped into the front entrance and waited behind the door. When he finally entered, out of breath from his impromptu chase, I sprung out and tackled him with a hug.

“Kirito!”

“So, dinner?”

“You’re hopeless.”

We were both scolded for being late to dinner, even though Eugeo had come to collect me so that I wouldn’t get into further trouble for skipping the meal altogether. Tomorrow, we’d be expected to scrub every inch of the training facility. Eugeo gave me quite the irritated look for that. I told him that he’d chosen to come find me of his own volition.

After apologizing and accepting our punishment, we went back to our room and got ready for bed. I wandered out into the common space between our bedrooms and caught him lying on the sofa reading a book. He’d poured two cups of steaming tea and set them on the table. I took a seat by his feet.

“Oh, is it my turn?” he asked, looking at the bathroom.

“Don’t you want to drink your tea while it’s still hot?” I asked.

He glanced up at the ceiling and hummed. He sat up and set his book down on the sofa next to him. Smiling, he picked up both of the teacups and handed one to me. I took it, thanked him, and blew on it.

“Okay, but after this I’m taking my bath,” he said. “Honey?”

“Sure,” I said.

He picked up a small jar, opened it, and then let me take the spoon out to stir some into my tea. When I finished, I returned the spoon, took the jar from him, and held it out for him to do the same. He replaced the spoon, so I sat the jar back down on the table and took a sip of my tea.

“Chamomile,” I noted.

Eugeo smiled.

“Hopefully it will help us rest up for all of that cleaning we have to do tomorrow,” he said.

I made a noise in my throat and quickly sipped more tea. Eugeo hummed. He glanced out of the back window. The sun had set, so now the stars were brighter than ever. Our lucky meteor shower had ended, but the sky was still breathtaking. Eugeo turned back to me, lifting one eyebrow.

“You really won’t tell me what you wished for earlier?” he said.

I shook my head.

“I want it to come true, don’t I?”

He shrugged his shoulders in defeat.

“Would you ever tell me if it came true?”

His question stumped me. If it came true, that meant we’d be experiencing a romantic spark of some sort. I couldn’t help but blush at the thought of it. He clearly noticed. His eyes widened a little and his mouth formed a perfect ‘o.’ I took another sip of my tea and hoped he just thought the heat was getting to my face.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

Our eyes met.

“Yes, I’d tell you if it came true.”

The corners of his lips turned up. His eyes seemed brighter. He finished drinking his tea and stood up. He set the cup down on the table, picked up his book, and walked over to my side of the couch. Placing one hand on my shoulder, he gave me a gentle squeeze.

“I look forward to that day.”

Having said his piece, he gave me a peculiar smile and walked into the bathroom. As soon as he shut the door, I paced over to the window. Setting my tea down on the sill, I opened the window up. A rush of cool air ruffled my partially wet hair. I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath of the fresh night scent. When I opened them, I smiled out at the twinkling stars.

“So do I, Eugeo.”

I leaned on the sill, holding my cheek in my hand as I sipped on my tea. I had a good feeling about this wish. It was like a thousand shooting stars had shown up right as I sat with Eugeo earlier to prove something. My wish was going to come true.

        Even if things like wishes and plucking flowers were childish, they gave me a hope. A hope that Eugeo would fill that vast emptiness in my heart. A hope that one day, when we held hands, it wouldn’t be just to get the other’s attention, but because we cherished the other’s closeness. A hope that our wishes would overlap…

        I would tell him when my wish came true.

        And I truly believed that it would. 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This one-shot started as an image I knew I couldn't paint. Just a mental image in watercolor painting style of Kirito and Eugeo together on an island floating in space. I had complete other plans for this day's prompt and scrapped them to do something with that image. Since I can't do watercolors, I did a little digital art on my Tumblr (just like with the other days) and I hope it's good enough for this piece. <3


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